Rickey Dale Newman is now fit to stand trial again in connection with the 2001 mutilation and murder of a woman at a transient camp in Van Buren, a Crawford County circuit judge has ruled.
Circuit Judge Gary Cottrell concluded from multiple mental evaluation reports over 19 months that Newman's mental fitness to proceed to trial had been restored as ordered in a January 2014 ruling by the Arkansas Supreme Court.
His four-page ruling dated Wednesday declared that scheduling of motion hearings and setting a trial date would begin.
Newman's attorney, Julie Brain of Philadelphia, has a pending motion to suppress statements Newman made to police after his arrest in February 2001 and a motion for change of venue in the capital-murder trial.
Special prosecutor Ron Fields of Fort Smith also has a pending motion to limit evidence the defense can present at trial on possible alternate suspects.
In the 2014 ruling, the state's high court ruled that Cottrell had erred in 2011 in denying a new trial for Newman on the grounds he was mentally unfit to assist his attorney.
The court ruled Newman suffered from a mental disease or defect that interfered with his ability to assist his attorney in preparing for his 2002 trial. The court threw out the conviction and death sentence and sent the case back to Cottrell to restore Newman to competence so he could receive a new trial.
Cottrell wrote Wednesday that psychiatrist Brad Diner, whom he asked for an opinion on Newman's fitness to stand trial, stated in a report in early October that Newman had mental diseases and deficits that "tend to wax and wane with time and that, at the present time, the defendant is in fact fit."
In two previous mental evaluations, Newman, on instruction from Brain, refused to cooperate. The examining doctors said that despite not being able to examine Newman, they did not find signs of major mental illness.
Fields said Friday that he agreed with Cottrell's findings and noted that Cottrell wrote in his opinion that Brain did not oppose the doctors' conclusions.
"The court notes that the defense now insists that the defendant is, in fact, fit to proceed and therefore has embraced the recent finding by the Arkansas State Hospital to that effect, and urges the court to accept their findings," Cottrell wrote.
Efforts to reach Brain were unsuccessful. No one answered the phone at her Pennsylvania office.
Cottrell wrote that he hesitated to accept the doctors' findings because of letters Newman has sent him over the last several months. The letters contained language that Cottrell said showed Newman still was fixated on the death penalty even though Fields has said he is not seeking death in this case.
The letters also were sent without Brain's knowledge and against her advice, leading Cottrell to doubt Newman's ability to cooperate with his attorney and understand the proceedings against him.
The frequency of the letters has slowed, Cottrell wrote, but if the letters become more frequent and continue to contain the language that has been worrying him, "the court will immediately take action as recommended by the Arkansas Supreme Court to stop the proceedings and order the defendant recommitted for evaluation and/or treatment."
Newman, now 58, was arrested in February 2001 in the slaying of 46-year-old Marie Cholette. In his one-day trial in June 2002, in which he acted as his own attorney, Newman told the jury he killed Cholette and asked to be sentenced to death.
After he was condemned, he successfully waived his appeals and was scheduled for execution on July 26, 2005. Four days before his execution, attorneys filed for and received a stay on his behalf.
NW News on 11/07/2015